The Science of Thinking
Veritasium
youtube· 11:47standard
1.The Unpleasantness of Thinking
0:00 / 1:54This chapter introduces the idea that thinking is often perceived as unpleasant and something people try to avoid. It uses examples like a simple astronomical question and a classic bat-and-ball problem to illustrate how people rush to incorrect answers rather than engaging in careful thought.
- Cognitive effort
- Avoidance of thinking
- Bat and Ball problem
What's inside this course
- 0:00
1. The Unpleasantness of Thinking
This chapter introduces the idea that thinking is often perceived as unpleasant and something people try to avoid. It uses examples like a simple astronomical question and a classic bat-and-ball problem to illustrate how people rush to incorrect answers rather than engaging in careful thought.
- 1:54
2. Introducing System One and System Two
The video introduces a model of the brain's operation with two systems: System One (Gun) and System Two (Drew). Drew represents conscious, effortful, and slow thought, capable of complex calculations and error correction.
- 3:35
3. Understanding Gun's Automatic Processes
This chapter details System One, or Gun, as incredibly quick and automatic, constantly processing sensory information and making assumptions without conscious awareness. It highlights how Gun's perceptions form the basis of conscious thoughts.
- 5:26
4. Working Memory and Chunking
The video explains that Drew operates within working memory, which has a very limited capacity. It introduces the concept of chunking, where familiar information is grouped, allowing Drew to manipulate more information at once, thus overcoming working memory limitations.
- 6:47
5. Learning and Automation: Drew to Gun
Learning is presented as the process of building larger chunks and automating tasks, essentially transferring them from Drew to Gun. This is achieved through active, effortful, and repeated engagement with information, as seen in learning to tie shoelaces or developing 'muscle memory' in music and sports.
- 8:48
6. Observing Drew's Effort: The Add One Task
This chapter demonstrates how Drew's effort can be physiologically observed through tasks like the 'Add One' and 'Add Three' exercises. Pupil dilation, increased heart rate, and sweat production indicate when Drew is working hard, highlighting that most daily tasks are handled by Gun.
- 11:42
7. When Gun and Drew Mix Up
The video explores situations where Gun's automatic responses can lead to errors or difficulties, such as adapting to new cultural norms (light switches in Australia) or learning new motor skills (the backwards bicycle). It also revisits the 'Bat and Ball' problem to show how Gun's quick, unverified answer can be endorsed by a lazy Drew.
Every chapter ends with a checkpoint (quiz, flashcards, retell, diagram, or prediction) and the course closes with a final boss-fight. More courses →
Full transcript of “The Science of Thinking”
— 329 segments
0:00For most of us, thinking
is at least somewhat unpleasant.
0:04We try to avoid it, where possible.
0:06For example:
0:06I asked these guys how long does it take for the earth to go around the Sun.
0:10- What do you reckon, cuz?
0:12- Isn't it 24 hours ?
- Obviously a day, yes.
0:14Or take this problem
0:15which has been given to thousands of college students.
0:18You go into a toy store,
0:20and there's a toy bat and a toy ball.
0:23Together they cost 1.10$.
0:26And the bat costs a dollar more than the ball.
0:29How much does the ball cost ?
0:31- Ten cents.
0:33- We're all wrong aren't we?
0:35- WHAT'S THE ANSWER ?
0:37If you think about it for just a second
0:39it's obvious that the ball can't cost ten cents,
0:41because if it did, then the bat
0:43would cost 1.10$ and the two items
0:45together would cost 1.20$.
0:47The correct answer is five cents.
0:49Now, the point of these questions is not that they're difficult.
0:52Any of these people
0:52could have quickly check their answer if they wanted to.
0:54The point is that they don't check
0:57because thinking is uncomfortable.
1:00It takes effort.
1:05- Hey, the Earth doesn't take one day to get around the Sun.
1:10- Takes like a year!
1:13[LAUGHS]
1:14Now, I think it would be easy to put these mistakes down to
1:16stupidity,
1:17and believe that you, being much smarter, could never fall into such traps.
1:20But then I think you'd be fooling yourself.
1:23I think these examples reveal blind spots in all of our thinking
1:26due to the fundamental way that our brains work .
1:29Now, one way of modeling how the brain
1:30operates is as though there are two
1:32systems at work
1:34psychologists call them system one and
1:36system two but maybe it's useful to
1:38think of them as characters so let's
1:39call system one Gun and system two Drew.
1:42You are Drew. he represents your
1:45conscious thought, the voice in your head.
1:47<Drew>"I am who you think you are"
1:49he's the one capable of following instructions.
1:52He can execute a series of steps.
1:54If you are asked to calculate 13 x 17 in your head, for example,
1:57he is the one who has to do it.
1:59<Drew>"can just use my calculator?"
2:01no...<Drew>"all right, um, seventeen times...."
2:04Drew is lazy
2:05it takes effort to get Drew to do anything
2:07and he is slow but he's the careful one,
2:09capable of catching and fixing mistakes...
2:13<Drew>"221".
2:15Now meet system one Gun.
2:16He is incredibly quick,
2:18which he needs to be since he's constantly
2:20processing copious amounts of
2:21information coming in through your
2:22senses. He picks out the relevant bits
2:25and discard the rest, which is most of it,
2:28and he works automatically without you,
2:30Drew, being consciously aware of what
2:32he is doing. For example when you spot
2:34them text he reads it before you can
2:36even decide whether or not you want to
2:38read it
2:39Gun fills in the gaps. For example, what
2:42does this say?
2:43Did you notice that the "H" in 'the'
2:45'A' in 'cat' are actually the same symbol
2:48but you had no trouble reading it
2:49because Gun made the correct, automatic,
2:51assumption, so although Drew is unaware
2:54of what Gun is doing, its Guns
2:56perceptions that become the basis for
2:57your conscious thoughts. The way I like
3:00to think of it
3:00each of these characters is related to
3:02one of your main memory structures, Guns
3:05automatic responses are made possible by
3:07long-term memory, the library of
3:08experiences you've built up over your
3:10lifetime. In contrast, Drew exists
3:13entirely within working memory so he's
3:15only capable of holding four or five
3:17novel things in mind
3:18at a time. This is perhaps one of the
3:20best-known findings from psychology. That
3:22our capacity to hold and manipulate
3:24novel information is incredibly limited
3:26like when trying to remember a string of
3:28random numbers. "6 7 5 5 3 1"
3:35(offscreen)Yes! But we are able to overcome these
3:39limitations if the information is
3:40familiar to us. For example, let me give
3:42you four random digits "7102". Now these would
3:47normally take up most of your working
3:49memory capacity just to remember, but, if
3:51you reverse them, 2017, there now just one
3:54thing the present year the process of
3:56grouping things together according to
3:58your prior knowledge is called chunking
3:59and you can actually hold four or five
4:01chunks in working memory at once. So the
4:03larger the chunks
4:04the more information you can actively
4:06manipulate at one time. Learning is then,
4:09the process of building more and bigger
4:10chunks by storing and further connecting
4:12information in long-term memory
4:14essentially passing off tasks from Drew
4:16to Gun. But in order for this to happen,
4:18Drew first has to engage with the
4:20information actively and effort-fully,
4:22often multiple times. For example, when
4:24you were first learning to tie your
4:25shoelaces, you probably recited a rhyme to
4:28help you remember what to do next
4:30using up all your working memory in the
4:31process. But after doing it over and over
4:33and over again, it gradually became
4:36automatic, that is, Drew doesn't have to
4:38think about it anymore because Guns got it.
4:40Musicians and sports stars refer to this
4:42as muscle memory, though of course, the memory
4:44is not the muscles
4:45it's still in the brain just controlled
4:47by Gun. "You can practice everything
4:49exactly as it is, and exactly as it's written
4:52but at just such a speed that you have to
4:57think about and know exactly where you
4:59are and what your fingers are doing and what
5:00it feels like." Slow deliberate conscious
5:03practice repeated often enough, leads to this:
5:06<harp music>
5:19I bet 99% of the time what appears to be
5:21superhuman ability, comes down to the
5:23incredible automation skills of Gun,
5:24developed through the painstaking
5:26deliberate practice of Drew. What's
5:29interesting is, its actually possible to
5:30see how hard Drew is working, just by
5:32looking at someone. Try this task: I'm
5:35going to show you four digits, I want you
5:36to read them out loud and then after two
5:38beats, I want you to say each number back
5:40on the beat, but adding one to each digit.
5:42So, as an example, 7 2 9 1 (beats in background)
5:45should be...
5:478
5:483
5:490
5:502
5:51This is called the Add One task and it
5:52forces Drew to hold these digits and
5:54memory while making manipulations to
5:55them. Now it's important to say the
5:57numbers back on the beat. Try this one:
6:00(beats in background at regular interval)
6:07To make it harder, you can try adding 3
6:09instead of 1.
6:10Ready?
6:12(beats in background at regular interval)
6:18Now what you're unaware of, is that, as
6:20you're completing this task, your pupils
6:22are dilating. When Drew is hard at work,
6:24as he is in this task, you have a
6:26physiological response: including
6:27increased heart rate, sweat production,
6:29and pupil dilation.
6:31Watch how the pupils of these participants enlarge as they
6:33perform the Add One and Add Three tasks.
6:364...3...9...7...2
6:39(beats in backrgound)
6:425...4...0...8...3
6:47(offscreen) Excellent! nicely done.
6:49(offscreen conversation)..."this requires a lot of thinking" "I know, that's the point <laughter>
6:536 9 1 6
6:587 0 2 7
7:02When this research was originally carried out the researchers
7:04made a surprising observation: when the
7:06participants were not engaged with the
7:08tasks that were just chatting with the
7:09experimenters their pupils didn't really
7:12dilate at all..
7:13this indicates that the Add One and Add Three
7:15tasks are particularly strenuous
7:17for system two, and that most of our
7:19day-to-day life is a stroll for Drew
7:21with most tasks handled automatically by
7:23Gun. Just as we spend a lot of our lives
7:25lounging around, our brains spend most of
7:27their time doing the mental equivalent.
7:30And I don't mean to make that sound like a
7:31bad thing, this is how our brains evolved
7:33to make the best use of resources. For
7:35repetitive tasks we developed automatic
7:37ways of doing things, reserving Drew's
7:39limited capacity for things that really
7:41need our attention, but in some
7:43circumstances there can be mix-ups.
7:45For example, I moved to Australia in 2004 and
7:47one of the first things I learned was
7:49that turn the lights on you flick the
7:51switch down.
7:53My whole life growing up in Canada Gun had automated that 'up' means
7:56'on', so no matter how well I, Drew, knew
7:59that 'down' was 'on' in Australia I would
8:01for years, continually switch the lights
8:03off when entering a room and on when
8:05leaving. When Destin learn to ride the
8:07backwards bicycle with its steering
8:09reverse it took months to overcome his
8:11automated habitat and once he had done
8:13that he couldn't easily go back to
8:14writing a normal bike. Understanding Gun
8:16and Drew also explains errors in the "Bat
8:18and Ball" question. Its Gun who first
8:21perceived the key pieces of information
8:22that, together the bat and ball cost a
8:24dollar ten, The bat costs more than the ball
8:26so the ball costs...
8:27Gun: "Ten cents"
8:29Drew: "Ten cents"
8:29Gun imediately had a answer that he
8:31blurted out automatically.
8:32Meanwhile Drew, without being consciously
8:34aware that the answer came from Gun
8:36endorsed the idea without checking it,
8:38after all the answers sounded reasonable
8:39and drew is lazy
8:42so how do you get Drew to do more
8:43work? Well researchers have found at least one
8:45way. When they gave out a clearly printed
8:47test including the "Bat and Ball"question
8:49to incoming college students 85% got at
8:52least one wrong but when they printed
8:54the test in a hard-to-read font with
8:56poor contrast the error rate dropped to
8:57thirty-five percent harder to read test
9:00resulted in more correct answers and the
9:02explanation for this is simple. Since Gun
9:04can't quickly jump to an answer he hands
9:06off the task to Drew who then invest the
9:08required mental effort to reason his way
9:10to the correct answer. When something is
9:12confusing, Drew worked harder and when
9:14Drew work harder you're more likely to
9:16reach the right answer and remember the experience.
9:19This is something i think the advertising industry knows about and is
9:22using to its advantage. A few years ago,
9:24again in Australia, I saw a giant
9:26billboard that had just two letters on it
9:28"Un". There was no logo, no indication of
9:31what it was for
9:32and this seems to go against all the
9:33basic principles of advertising: to show
9:35what the product does, how it's better than
9:37the competition, and use clear
9:38branding and maybe a jingle to make it
9:40memorable. The goal is usually to make
9:42the message as easy to understand as
9:44possible so Drew doesn't have to work
9:46very hard, but if you look at a lot of
9:48effective advertising today, it's changed
9:50to be more confusing.
9:52as the "Un" campaign rolled out across Sydney, I saw ads like
9:55this one in bus shelters.
9:56"Un" explained. With 'Un' there is no stress, just unstress
10:00no hassle, just unhastle with 'Un' you
10:03can undo what you did, you can undrive
10:05through the car wash with the window
10:06down or unbreak dance in front of your
10:08teenage son. And his mates. 'Un' makes life
10:10relaxing and unreal. 'Un' your life. Be
10:12happy and live for now. Don't worry. Unworry.
10:16Can you guess what the ads were for?
10:18They're actually for insurance. Now that
10:20advertising is everywhere, Gun is skilled
10:22at filtering it out. Its automatic, if I
10:24just saw another insurance ad that I never
10:26would have given it a second thought, but
10:27something that doesn't make sense, thats
10:29something Gun can't deal with, so he
10:31hands it off to Drew
10:33This same realization has been happening
10:35in education: lectures which have long
10:36been the dominant teaching method, are
10:38now on the decline. Like the old form of
10:40advertising, they're too easy to tune out
10:42and often, especially in science lectures,
10:44too many new pieces of information are
10:46presented, and that exceeds Drew's
10:48capacity because he doesn't have big
10:49enough chunks to break the material into.
10:51In place of lectures, universities are
10:54introducing workshops, peer instruction
10:55and formats where students are forced to
10:57answer more questions, do more work than
10:59just listen and take notes, and this will
11:01undoubtedly make Drew work harder,
11:03which is good because that's how
11:04learning happens, but a lot of students
11:06don't like it because it requires more
11:08effort. Just as it's hard to motivate
11:10someone to get off the couch and
11:11exercise, it's hard to get Drew to give
11:13his full effort. There's an appeal to
11:16doing things you already know, for the
11:18musician to play the same familiar songs
11:20that Gun has already automated, that feel
11:23and sound good. To watch videos that give
11:25you the sensation of understanding
11:27without actually learning anything. To
11:29always drive with the GPS on so you
11:31never get lost, but you also never
11:33learn the way. If you really want to
11:35learn and get better at anything, have
11:37any chance of becoming an expert, you
11:39have to be willing to be uncomfortable.
11:41Because thinking takes effort, it
11:44involves fighting through confusion, and
11:46for most of us
11:47that's at least somewhat unpleasant.